Posted on 07/30/2019 11:05:25 AM PDT by Brian Griffin
Many retail employees are having a hard time making ends meet. Leftists have proposed raising wages to $15/hour, and sometimes have done so, but such wages are unrealistically expensive for most retail employers.
If retail stores had restricted occupancy apartments above their selling floor, retail employees could live in these and not need to pay for a car and liability insurance. Residential restricted occupancy is sometimes found in English agricultural regions to keep housing affordable for people working in agriculture.
Retail store residency would have additional benefits of reducing road congestion and CO2 emissions, increasing employee reliability, the amount of employee free time and the number of people able to live in an metropolitan area without overcrowding its roads.
Employees might get paid $4/hour plus usage of the apartment plus $.01/hour for each square foot of their apartment less than 600.
In some cases there might be sliding wall system in an apartment to make for either one large bedroom or two small bedrooms.
To fund adequate Social Security benefits for the employee, an added $1/hour FICA tax might be levied on the employee.
The apartment might be valued at $700/month for income taxation, welfare and health insurance subsidy purposes.
There might be a 10-day grace period to live in the apartment after quitting or getting fired from a job. There might also be a waiting period of up to 10 days to move into such an apartment.
Whether or not specific apartments are employer furnished and their exact size would be left to employment market forces.
Employees not needing or currently getting an employer apartment would simply work for the usual wages and benefits.
Excess retail store apartments might made available to nearby restaurants and their employees on a similar basis.
It wouldn’t be a perfect situation, that’s for sure. lol
But some occupations already offer housing. Cruise ship workers, for example.
“Here’s a better idea: pricey rooftop garden apartments making the retail spaces more money allowing them to hire more people?”
Road capacity is often already saturated.
Hiring more people and losing money on each is unlikely.
The “garden” would be a parking lot.
Your idea, when applicable, takes the form of a “mixed use” development.
My idea takes vehicles off roads, it doesn’t add vehicles to roads, overall.
You mean by a Court that has kicked the Constitution to the curb since the 1930s?
It is not constitutional.
Along with a lot of other stuff the Court has lawlessly added to the proverbial margins of the paper in crayon.
$346/month in 1981 adjusted for inflation would be $1,055.77 in 2019. Min. wage in 1981 was $3.35/hr adjusted for inflation would be $10.25/hr.
My idea would be people making the most money they can, how they want to, and them deciding what to do with it.
Your idea is the government deciding how they should do business.
Real action would be an across the board 25% import tariff, now that would repatriate jobs like nobodies business.
Most minimum wage jobs are starter jobs, going to kids historically.
Anyone in the place to have to pay rent whose skill set is still worth only minimum wage may end up being screwed ... and it’s okay if some folks lives just sick.
“Still no delegated power given the federal for the statute.”
Each level(federal+state+local) of government needs to step aside a bit for this to fly.
“Suck”
“Sick” is close though.
Sick or suck?
What I said had no bearing on State powers.
Suck ... i and u are sude by sude ;)
People making min. wage and having "sucky sicky" lives still vote. And guess who they vote for?
“you can find yourself another job and place to live”
There are money people that financially want/need extra money and tell their employer to give them a ring if opportunity arises.
The employer knows the person to ring for first.
Representation only with respect to delegated powers. All else is Arbitrary government and lawlessness.
Even States should operate within a framework of only delegated powers per their own state constitutions.
These, of course, are normally different than the federal for the sheer range of enumerated Powers.
Oh, and while we’re there: if you’re an adult and can only make minimum wage I’ll go out on a limb and opine that odds are you aren’t voting.
You may be buying lotto tickets but you aren’t voting.
Just like a mining company. That went well. Turn your employees into indentured servants who can’t afford to quit.
“Your idea is the government deciding how they should do business.”
It’s been that way a long time now.
Government zoning in the USA dates back to around 1923.
Fifth Avenue below Central Park was made into a commercial area by NYC ordering the road widened and the raised and projecting stoops of the brownstones removed about two decades before that.
Under existing rules and commercial conditions, local stores are getting decimated. Some rules need changing.
Yes, it is often easy to tell which employees want it more and who take better care of customers. They tend not to stay minimum wage unless the minimum wage is set significantly higher than other nearby places.
I’ve managed a fair number of folks and I was historically blessed by hard working and honest associates (loss from theft plummeted so much at one job when I got there — to zilch from employees since the last of the thieves go found out right around then — that because of how corporations work we ended up with less payroll two years later because the first year earnings jumped through the roof, then they projected a similar jump the next year ... but that was for 2002 ... so when 2002 went down they cut our hours for 2003 ... and raised projected sales again ... beginning a viscious circle).
Look up the town of Pullman in Illinois.
“Oh, and while we’re there: if you’re an adult and can only make minimum wage I’ll go out on a limb and opine that odds are you aren’t voting.”
In Florida, there is a $15/hour minimum wage proposed constitutional amendment proposal likely to be on the ballot.
The Democrats know how to boost turnout.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.